


A Case of Ocular Abomination

by fairbreeze, mapsincolor



Series: Observerse [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Bad Things Happen To Carlos, Carlos starts that way, Cecil is Mostly Human, Eldrich abominations, Enthusiastic Consent, M/M, Roleplay Logs, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, probably squicky if you have a thing about eyes, sexual and non-sexual consent issues, yes- it has both
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:21:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbreeze/pseuds/fairbreeze, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapsincolor/pseuds/mapsincolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>StrexCorp has a plan.  Cecil has a boyfriend.  Carlos has a problem.</p><p> <i><b>So you would observe?  OBSERVE.</b></i></p><p> <i>That was two days ago. No one has seen Carlos.</i></p><p> <i>(He sees them)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I RP a whole hell of a lot more than I write fanfic and, sometimes, those RP logs turn into their own AUs and ongoing continuities. I've always wanted to see some of those stories get a wider audience, but completely re-writing two different people's styles into a cohesive whole has always been more trouble than it was worth.
> 
> So, as an experiment, this is a barely edited compilation log of myself and [mapsincolor](http://mapsincolor.tumblr.com/) playing Cecil and Carlos, respectively.
> 
> If you like this story and want to see more of it, please let me know! I don't normally fish for comments, but I genuinely don't know how to judge the potential interest in something like this, especially as it's very different from what I normally post, stylistically-- there are definitely some errors and weirdness because of how it was originally written and compiled that will need to be gently overlooked. :)
> 
> \---
> 
> mapsincolor also did some great illustrations for various parts of the story, which will appear where appropriate. Links to these illustrations can be found at the end of the chapter they appear in, or you can check out the tumblr tag "observerse" to see all of them.

Today you might wake up, shower, and howl in your bloodstone circle. Or maybe you would shower first, then remember to wake up at lunch. You might have (gluten-free) pancakes. Or not. The one thing you WOULD do is turn on the radio. You might even be in time to catch the tail end of Cecil's latest interview.

_“- Well, it sure was a good thing he was looking into our oranges, or… we could have harmed a lot of people on our way to making a ton of money! So very much money. What’s a few lives? So much money! He’s a good scientist you have there. What’s his name again?”_

_“Ummmmmmm…..Carlos?”_

_“Right. That’s right. Carlos. Okay. Good talking to you! Gotta go. Bye!”_

_“Oh, uhh, okay. Well, thank you, Lauren! Goodbye.”_

You don't see the people talking. Because this is radio, and that would be kind of weird, right? You definitely don't see the bloody circle under Cecil's desk, the one even Cecil doesn’t see - or how it flares when Cecil says Carlos's name, then disappears.

Lauren rushes out, smiling brightly.

Cecil continues with a public service announcement from the Night Vale Marine Biologist Association. 

Across town, Carlos half-listens to the radio. He shakes his head and chuckles. Of course this arid, land-locked town has Marine Biologists -

And the world goes **white**

A booming voice whispers from nowhere, everywhere, right in Carlos’s ear, he’s gone deaf he’s gone blind _whatishappening…_

**So you would observe?**

**OBSERVE.**

 

That was two days ago. No one has seen Carlos.

(He sees them)

Not seeing Carlos for two days isn't actually all that unusual, unfortunately. But he does at least usually call, now, when he's going to be working that much. Or at least an e-mail. Or a text message with an emoji of a sad koala bear doing science to some eucalyptus or something. Usually. So Cecil doesn't even start to look for him until the second day, and even then, it's just to drop by the lab with an extra coffee for him that he makes sure only has _one_ spider in it, since he knows how Carlos feels about spiders in his coffee. 

And the other scientists go from giving him looks with eyebrow waggles to looks of alarm. They’d assumed that Carlos had been holed up with him for two days. None of them have seen him. 

And slowly, in a growing panic, but slowly, Cecil learns that literally _no one_ has seen him. No one in town. Not Big Rico. Not anyone at the Ralphs. He even asks his Secret Police officer that's outside his apartment, and then the one outside of Carlos's, who swears that the scientist hasn't left. Cecil takes the stairs two at a time and stumbles in, almost falling on his face when he takes a shoulder to the door and it swings open, unlocked.

"Carlos? Carlos!" he tries to keep the panic out of his voice, but he doesn't do a very good job of it.

The apartment is black. Not dim, not dark. This is deeper, as if there's a fog over the windows, the walls, everything. The only light comes from the door, swallowed up within inches. 

_There_

_are_

_peoplethingsinhisheadinhiseyesinhisblood_

Carlos tries to close his eyes but - they keep - opening again on new places and _he’s not doing it_. The view tilts and swoops crazily from the ceiling fan to the computer screen to the phone which rings and

His eyes open.

_A man on the other end talks his words flying into_  
 _the air in pieces and stitched back together in the speakers there's a watch glittering on his wrist and the pieces fly_  
 _away_

His eyes open.

_to a girl in the desert, dirt-spattered, hair blown back by the blades of helicopters and flip_  
 _a couple in a restaurant and a mountain on the plain_  
 _and a park with no dogs_

_stacks of books crumbling and things slithering in_

His eyes open.

_they are in his head everyone everything he can see them  
the ants crawling into a soda can and the masked army striding nowhere and_

“Carlos?!”

_Noise and noise and noise is WORSE makeitstopmakeitstopstopSTOP_

His scream is not heard but _felt_ , shaking the room, the fog roiling into thrashing knots.

Cecil draws back sharply and does fall over this time, scrunches backwards in fear towards the door, though he’s not entirely sure _why_. And yet, something makes him close it with him inside instead of out, an instinct he does not understand (has never understood) telling him this is better somehow, this is what he does, this is what he does if he wants Carlos back. He doesn’t question it, any more than he questions how he can know what people are thinking or saying miles from where he is when he’s in the booth.

Okay. Close the door. Set his back against it. Think. Be quiet. Think. Think. Remain calm.

"Carlos?" he tries again, startled by how weak his voice sounds in the unnatural blackness of the room. His eyes strain in the dark. He can feel the difference in the air, and it takes him a moment to figure out how to breathe, to slide up the door to standing. "Carlos... can you hear me?" it's pitched lower, worried and tight, and he stumbles a few, cautious steps until he can set his hands on the back of the sofa. There's a lamp on a table next to the sofa and he reaches for it, sets his fingers against the switch. He does not switch it on though, not yet, not until he hears if he gets a response, but just knowing he _could_ fortifies him, just a bit.

Whatisitdoing?

Noisenoise still making noise. So easy to make it stop - it's just a mortal, sososo small. One snap and they break. Behind the human, a knot slowly curls out into a tendril. It slides in, smooth, silent, then lashes around his throat. Just a twist and it goes away and then there will be _quiet_ -

_No._  
No. No. "Carlos" means something - 

Means nothing what does it matter one person you have all of them

_My name I have a NAME. I... What am I doing?!_

Carlos struggles to make sound, to call out, but _how_? There’s no lungs, there’s no _air_ … What is happening to him?

The loop disintegrates, releasing the human - No, he has a name too – 

_Cecil_

Something looped around Cecil’s wrist, chest, leg, waist, _anything_ would have provoked _fight_. Not that fighting did anything, of course, but fighting was better than just letting something kill you and even if it did nothing it would make you feel better, and it was always good to take comfort in the moments before death. But the tendril doesn't seek out any of those places, no, it winds tight around his _throat_ and Cecil freezes, because there is the threat of the unknown and there is the threat of death... and then there is the threat of something hurting his _voice_. His fingers twitch against the switch of the lamp, but something in him tells him not to turn it on, not yet. Something in him _remembers_.

"Carlos," his voice is soft, quiet, closer to his radio voice than he normally uses at home in tone if not in volume. It's reactionary, something maybe not identical but very similar to whatever tells him things he cannot know dropping him into _using_ his voice, rather than just speaking, at the threat to it. "Is that you? Are you alright? Do you know what is going on?"

And it's that voice which reaches what is left of Carlos, what little remains in the crush of omnipresence.

_a man in a tan jacket a submarine and it's spreading further further another town in the desert and a man who smiles too much too wide and the station is full of blood_

But there's the VOICE. The voice which tells things as they should be. The one which always called him "The Scientist," giving him a place before Night Vale could swallow him whole. No matter how deep or awful, even the day he died, it's been there. It's a...

Focus.

This time, Carlos opens his eyes on purpose. And they open. And they open. 

Eyes appear all over the room, in pairs and trios and entire constellations. They turn from staring at the outside world to this one room, one spot, one person. They glare wide and bloodshot. They glitter in tiny clusters. Parabolic and reflective and compound and (somewhere) one pair of brown - a pair usually framed by thick glasses and mussed hair. 

A few glow, casting faint white light over the Voice.

Cecil sucks his breath in, hard, and does not turn on the light, his fingers falling away from the switch. He is frightened, of course, for both Carlos and himself, and surprised, because who wouldn't be, but the little "Oh!" he makes when that sucked-in breath leaves him again also makes it clear that he finds it _beautiful._

He can't immediately pick out Carlos's eyes— well, Carlos's _original_ eyes— in the visual cacophony of them, partially because there are so many and partially because it's the glowing ones that are easy to see. He doesn’t know what’s going on, though he feels like maybe he _should_ , that there’s some kind of scout badge for this he just doesn’t remember enough about to be helpful. Instead, he just repeats what he said before, hoping for a response this time that isn’t static screaming through the inside of his skull,

"Are you alright? What happened?" he can feel Carlos in here, knows that he's still alive and he's the one looking at him, even if he doesn't yet understand the scope of what's happening here.

At last there’s an answer, not even quite a whisper in the back of Cecil’s head, but _directed_ , purposeful. 

_I don't know._

There are a million Cecils. He glows in infrared, flaring. He's fractured into a thousand pieces. He's movement. He's monochromatic. He's a kaleidoscope, colors no human could classify. _I'm seeing him through all the eyes,_ Carlos realizes. No two sets see him the same way. There's something vital in that realization. He concentrates, trying to pull the data together. Cecil speaks, asks something. Carlos can't answer. It's taking all his battered sanity to reconcile the different versions. To make _his_ Cecil, one person out of all the disparate parts.

_Keep talking keep going. Keep me here. Please keep me here._

It's too many threads. Carlos grabs hold of the images but the thought slips through. It flies loose, projecting through the whole room.

Cecil sees it flicker through the room, through the eyes, and it's not in any language, doesn't make any sense, and still raises weird not-quite-a-memory hackles on the back of his neck, but he thinks he understands at least the sentiment behind it. Well, sort of. It's hard not knowing what's going on, hard talking to Carlos without knowing if Carlos is being attacked, without knowing if he, himself, is being attacked. But he thinks he understands more. Better. Something.

"It's all you, isn't it? I mean, more of you than normal, but not like... what's happening to me right now isn't what happened to you when it happened," that's nonsensical, but he feels like he needs to keep talking, "Don't worry, we'll find out what happened. I feel like I've seen this before, or something like it, so, you know, when I remember we can--" 

His voice falters, because it's just dawned on him that if he feels like he remembers this, but can't, it might have been re-educated out of him, and, if that's the case, what if they take Carlos? But he doesn't particularly want to share that thought at the moment, "--Figure out what's going on." That doesn't make sense either. He's babbling. He's talking to an empty room made of eye fog. There's nothing to center him anymore than there is anything to center Carlos.

There is one point of solid contact, though. Somewhere after his fingers slipped off the lamp-switch, a tendril has curled, loosely, around his neck again. It’s perversely calming, having it there, though it makes him feel strange. _Resonant_ is the word that comes to mind, but he doesn’t know why. He reaches up to touch it, fingers sliding along its mass, feeling out the its texture, seeing if the touch provokes a reaction.

Carlos is busy sorting desperately, grabbing each of Cecil’s words like an anchor. They hold him in place, promising a solution, a future, that this can be _fixed_. But fixing is secondary. First the system has to operate. Carlos methodically processes the visual inputs, comparing them to his own memories. Each image is synced with the original model. The infrared goes here, the insect there. Piece by piece, he begins to make sense of this chaos, just a little, just enough - 

Then Cecil touches him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All illustrations by [mapsincolor](http://mapsincolor.tumblr.com/)
> 
> You can see the full versions here:
> 
> Cover Art - [The Observer](http://mapsincolor.tumblr.com/post/96575741564)  
> In-Chapter Illustrations - [Chapter 1](http://mapsincolor.tumblr.com/post/97970412849)


	2. Chapter 2

Cecil’s touch is a jolt that shoots all the way back into the cloud, back to the one pair of brown eyes. Carlos’s eyes—the original set, anyway. They widen. How did the tendril get there? Hadn’t he let go already? He’d meant to.

_It didn't listen I didn't listen getoffofhim!_

It loosens, but he can't force it away. Part of it is the - thing - he's turning into. It's still not convinced Cecil isn't dangerous. Or worse, just a nuisance. 

Mostly though, he can't bear to give up that touch.

"Hey. Hey, it's okay," Cecil can feel the panic, echoing all around him, just out of the range of hearing, "Shhh... hey, I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Well, I suppose I might accidentally hurt you," he admits, a moment later, fingers still stroking over the little bit of more-solid fog, "since I'm not entirely sure what you are at the moment, but I promise I'd never deliberately hurt you." And leave it to Cecil to be more concerned about hurting Carlos than with Carlos hurting him, even though Carlos is, apparently, the one with entirely too many eyes and some kind of tentacle thing wound around Cecil’s neck. 

"It's alright. You don't have to let go," he says as it loosens to hang lower around his neck, more sweeping his collarbone than strangling him, "Not that I don't appreciate the extra breathing room, of course," there’s a hint of gratitude to his touch and all the colors and wavelengths Carlos can see him in mellow noticeably, turning cool colors instead of warm.

"It's a little strange," Cecil adds with a little laugh, as though he has _any_ concept of what strange is, "talking to an empty room like this. I can _feel_ you, but that's all." His face falls, slightly, the twist of his mouth says he's smiling, but his voice doesn't at all, "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I didn't know you weren't just at the lab."

_Hurt me?_

Every eye blinks, once. Carlos isn’t even sure he can be hurt anymore. Mentally obliterated, yes, he can feel that pressing in. But hurt? It’s too absurd. The fear is all for Cecil. The thing trying to absorb Carlos cares even less for him -

talking and hearing too much work too hard to stay here in limits why limit yourself you could see stars and molecules rearrange themselves there are other worlds to see why one mortal

One orb moves closer to Cecil. It watches his hand. Watches the individual bend of digits, curling into a whole. Tendons bend and dance. Each fingerprint is a map, ridges and lines forming topographies unique to this one person. 

_He is a world._

Slowly, Carlos raises the tendril. The end splits in five. The pieces waver, elongating into something like fingers. They curl around Cecil’s.

"Oh. Hi there," Cecil coos, surprised, at the psuedo-fingers curling through and against his own, more like he's talking to a particularly affectionate cat than eye fog that might be his boyfriend, or may have already eaten his boyfriend, or both. 

He's betting more and more on "both".

There's something about the touch, now that it's more hand shaped, that definitely reminds him of Carlos, but he has the feeling that if Carlos was entirely in control of what was happening, he'd have either been swept off his feet by now, or Carlos never would have touched him at all. For the first time in his entire life, Cecil realizes that he's probably entirely too calm about something _while it’s happening_ , particularly since he can still feel the panic in the room, resonating at a sub-aural level. But it's hard to be afraid of Carlos, even when he's currently composed of eye fog. He should probably be more afraid _for_ Carlos than he is, as well, but this is Night Vale and strange things happen all the time. With a little work, they can be put back to rights. Usually. Besides, he's pretty sure "death by eye fog" wasn't on any of his tablets at City Hall, because he's pretty sure he would remember something like that. Hopefully that means this is something they can fix.

He makes the conscious decision to not remember that there's nothing about Carlos on those tablets at all.

Of course, the tablets neglect to mention a LOT of things. Like certain shady corporations moving in on your town. Or that rain of goats last week. The oracles were only (mostly) human. They did their best, okay?!

Cecil strokes his thumb along the curve of the "hand" holding his instead of remembering anything that might be depressing or forbidden and draws it up to his mouth to press a little kiss against the "knuckles", 

"See? Everything's fine.” Everything is also _not_ fine, but contradictions are _hardly_ going to start bothering him _now_. He waves with the other hand at the orb that's moved closer. "See?"

At the kiss against his “hand”, Carlos’s fear doesn’t... subside, exactly, but pitches down a few notches. He finds he can push through a bit more, at least enough to critically analyze “Fine." Of course things are not fine but it’s what you say in these situations. (Really, what else WOULD you say if your boyfriend suddenly gains a case of Occular Abomination? Somehow Dear Abby never covered that one.)

Carlos wants to laugh, the kind when you are so far beyond fucked you have to laugh or start screaming and never stop. He wants to kiss Cecil right back. What he does manage is a hum. It thrums, low, definitely an amused sound. 

_Why aren’t you running? You really, really should be running._

The hand turns over, palm against Cecil's cheek. It rests there. Slowly, the thumb starts brushing back and forth. It’s familiar, this placement. Cecil laughs, partially at the humming noise and partially at something he cannot hear. There is an edge to the laugh, but it’s genuine enough, at least. He shakes his head, slightly, can't help but lean a little into the touch on his face, because it's weird and inhuman and unmistakably Carlos, 

"Well, for starters, what good would it do? You've pretty much got me," he twists his head into the touch to his cheek to press a little kiss to the bottom of the "palm", "Also, I don't think I could ever run from you. Or _want_ to run from you, for that matter.” He doesn't know why he says that. Well, he knows why he says what he says _in particular_ , he's just not sure what unspoken question he's answering. It's not like he heard Carlos say anything, or picked up a concept that complicated from the aura of the room. He just sort of... knows.

He nuzzles against the "hand", slightly, 

"Have you been like this since the last time I saw you?" he knows Carlos can't really answer, but he asks anyway, to say something, to give Carlos something to focus on. He's not really an expert in these sorts of things, but it seemed to be helping.

_I... I don't..._

Then it hits - Cecil _answered_ him. Specifically. How?! At best, that hum could only have conveyed a general emotion. Had some other variable changed? Something niggles, growing more and more persistent. When Carlos turns his attention to it, he feels... _Warmth slight rasp, rough, sandpaper - no, whiskers, 5 o'clock shadow._

It's emanating from the point of contact between Cecil's cheek and the tendril.

_I'm **feeling.**_

Touch? Is that it? Carlos extends another coil. Forming a hand is much easier this time. It brushes into Cecil's hair, winding through the pale strands. Soft. The next thought is short and direct.

_Can you hear me?_

"Not really," Cecil answers, without thinking about it, "It's not really words, persay," he says that, but he's answering a very specific question, "I just know what you mean.” He shrugs slightly. Mysteries. He's so used to them that he barely even notices when a new one appears, after all. It doesn't bother him that Carlos is eye-fog, beyond that it seems to be upsetting to Carlos; he doesn't think it's strange that he's having answers to questions spill out of him without ever even knowing the questions.

If it was anyone else, truth be told, he would likely be horrified. But its _Carlos_ , dear, sweet, perfectly-imperfect Carlos. How could he possibly be afraid of telling him anything?

Besides, the hand through his hair feels nice, even if he would prefer something more warm and solid… As if in response to Cecil's thought, the wispy hands gain volume. The ends curl more as if they ended in fingernails. The texture changes too, shifting closer to skin.

Carlos, meanwhile, is distracted by this new advance in communication. For a moment he forgets to be terrified. This is a development! It's progress! There's excitement in the next conveyance.

_Is more like psychic projection then? I think it's connected to touch._

"I don't know? Maybe?" Cecil has no idea why he says that, or what he's even saying it _to_ , "I keep having to figure out what you said from what I'm saying," Cecil's not sure if that makes any sense, but then, he's not the Scientist, "Is it? You should touch me more, then."

The last words just kind of tumble out and, once they do, then he has to back up and consider them, piece back together what might have been said, just like he indicated. He's flushing by the end, flustered, 

"I mean. Ah. If that's helping, I mean?" It's clear in his voice when he's automatically answering whatever Carlos asks and when his own thoughts are scrambling around and occasionally popping out of his mouth as sound, "You're not hurting me or anything so... um. Do what you've got to do, I guess?"

That's... quite an invitation. Probably not meant nearly so provoking as it came out. It's just the logical follow-up, isn't it?

Under one hand, Carlos feels Cecil's cheek warm. The infrared vision is showing a noticeable spike in his body temperature too. That's a lot of red - Which reminds Carlos of all the eyes again. The enthusiasm vanishes. The orbs start rotating toward each other wildly, wide with alarm.

How can he be doing this? He shouldn't be this, shouldn't be in Cecil's _head -_

_I don't know if it's helping, I don't shouldn't can't... what IS this?!..._

Cecil clutches suddenly at his own head, though there's no reason to that he can discern. He hears nothing, and he's not in any pain, but just... he needs to, suddenly. 

"Shhh..." he soothes, instinctively, "It's okay, you can, I don't mind, it's alright.” He's got no clue what it is that he doesn't mind, but he trusts himself on that one. "I don't know what's going on, but you're alright." Cupping a hand back around the "hand" on his face, he nuzzles his cheek back into it and forces himself to relax out of whatever sudden spike that had been, incomprehensible and strange. If he closes his eyes, if he can't see the dim light from all of the glowing eye-orbs in the fog, he can almost believe it's just Carlos. Just Carlos standing in front of him, with one hand on his face and one in his hair, nothing to be worried about. "You're alright and I'm alright.” It edges back into his Radio Voice, slow and a little commanding, deliberate, "Everything will be fine. Everything _is_ fine. Whatever you need to do, you _can_ do it. You may. It will be alright," he repeats, partially for Carlos, but mostly for himself, with conviction.

Carlos sees Cecil jerk, and nearly draws away completely. This is the precipice. He can feel what's left of his sanity teetering, clutching this fragile human link. The _Thing_ is waiting, watching. It will obliterate everything left. But he _will_ let go. He'll _jump_ before he lets Cecil break because of him - 

Then the Voice fixes him in place. The link turns iron, locking tight and promising - consenting? To what? Carlos doesn't even know. Two more coils come out. They wrap a few times around Cecil, clinging - a hug, or the closest thing possible. 

Cecil makes a soft noise at the feel of _things_ curling around him, too coiling, too thin to even pretend they are arms. It's surprise and it’s _fear_ , even if doesn’t want it to be.

The coils clench reflexively at that gasp. Carlos can see in infinite detail how Cecil's jaw tightens. There's a sheen of sweat across his brow. The individual droplets shine bright as diamonds through a microscopic set of lenses. 

Cecil can’t help but fight a little against them, even if it’s just a reflexive tense, a bit of a wriggle. He’s got a lifetime of learned behavior in a town where people routinely died from spirits or snakes or books, but he forces himself to relax after a moment, because it’s still _Carlos_ , isn’t it? Carlos can startle him, but not _scare_ him. He can't exactly hug back, but he can run his hands, soothingly, over whatever it is that's wound around him, stroke his fingers against what sometimes feels like scales and sometimes slime and sometimes smoke, but still screams _Carlos_ at some part of his brain he doesn't fully understand.

At the stroking, there’s a slight ease in the room. The next broadcast is more of a sigh. _...This wouldn't be so bad if I knew what I was._ Carlos is still a Scientist, somewhere. He needs something solid, a definition, classification, phylum, anything.

"You're _Carlos_ ,” Cecil answers, half the weird, reflexive way he’s been answering and half Radio Voice. He’d lost control of it, somewhat, always has more trouble holding the _command_ of it around people who know more what he normally sounds like. What was natural in the booth felt unnatural here, all the more for how he still partially feels as though he’s talking to an empty room. He regains lost footing slowly, but firmly as he speaks. "Whatever else you also are, you are still Carlos. You have not lost that. You _will not_ lose that," he wishes he were as confident about that as he forces himself to sound, but, hey, no one's perfect, "Anything else-- _everything_ else-- is just in addition to that. What is anyone, really, except for a name and a set of interests; some unusual, some mundane, a collection of thoughts and experiences, drifting through a particular set of points in space and time, trying to pull meaning out of the nothingness we all come from and turn into. You are not really so different now than you were, are you?"

Maybe that was a bit much, but it's hard to stop it, once he gets on a roll.

Cecil’s voice holds a strange kind of _power_ and Carlos can feel the… _Thing_ taking an interest. Carlos isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, yet—but like this, Cecil could order Carlos to let him go and Carlos… probably would. He thinks he would. Instead, all that potential strength goes back into shaping the world as it should be. Or how Cecil wants it to be. This impossible optimist - He could get _crushed_ , right here and he delivers a treatise on self. 

Carlos feels the laughter edging back in, a little more frazzled this time. Gently, he brushes a finger across Cecil's eyes. _Evidence suggests I am more than a little different, Love. It isn't just a haircut this time._

Whatever the word "love" does to all of Cecil’s vital signs that Carlos can see, when it's whispered somewhere in his head beyond words, beyond even conscious thought, it’s _gorgeous_. He still can't actually _hear_ it, but he takes a deep, sudden breath and can almost feel himself glow. Not literally. Or at least, not literally on any of the wavelengths human eyes can see, but he just... feels something light up in his chest for as little reason as he had grabbed his head a moment before. 

The reaction is immediate. Carlos can't sort out the individual inputs. Cecil blooms into a cloud of fireflies, endless pinpricks of flickering light against the gloom. They gleam near and far, rapid-fire in the slow drift of gold. Each flicker is a call, with the answer "Here, here, this is your place." 

Cecil loses track of the Voice entirely, settling more into the tone he uses around the house, whispered into the same pillow at night,

“I didn’t say you weren’t _different_. Just that all the important parts seem pretty much the same to me.” Carlos is right, Cecil _could_ be crushed by the tentacles at any moment. But he isn't, and there's a distinction there that Carlos seems to be missing. Cecil would argue that he was not an optimist in the slightest but a realist, and that water was important in the desert whether it was half full or half empty and that people were concerned about the _strangest things_ , sometimes.

"The hair was far worse," he says with an angry sort of pout he can still summon even this long after the fact. He's only half-joking.

Impossibly, Carlos almost laughs. _I think... I think I can believe the important parts are the same..._

_...except for the hair?_

At least Carlos can try to joke back. There was power in the Voice and that was important, but it’s far more comforting to hear the tone that Carlos thinks of as _theirs_. (Or maybe, sometimes, when he lets himself, _his_.) The hand in Cecil's curls begins stroking again, combing through, idly. They never stay in one place.

Cecil sighs at the touch, half happily and half joking, 

"Well, I _do_ already miss your hair," the words say he doesn't know if they will be able to regain it, but the tone, fond and joking, says that he's not worried about it, because of course they will.

Cecil chances opening his eyes again, and he's hit once more by the strangeness of it, but it's less fear and more how odd it is to feel so thoroughly surrounded by Carlos and not actually be able to _see_ much of anything. He can make out dim shapes in the room and he can look down and see himself, darker patches of fog wound around him, lit only by the light of all of the eyes, staring at him. But there's nothing he can actually identify as Carlos, despite the fact that the touch feels just like his... if he had fog tentacles.

At any rate, it feels a little strange to push into the carding touch to his hair without a chest to also snuggle against, or a point of reference to look at fondly; he does it anyway, fingers still sliding, soothingly, against whatever is wrapped around him. Everything about him says that it's alright, that it's going to _be_ alright, his touch sure and the beat of his heart, warm and steady, the glow of him shifting and resettling with every soft touch against his scalp.

As that thought passes through Cecil's mind, the mass in front of him begins to increase in density. It draws closer, with one set of eyes in particular shifting forward. Now that he's paying attention, Carlos realizes this is the set he's been defaulting to. They're nothing special. Among the glare of raptors and slitted cats-eyes, this pair is insignificant and myopic. They can barely make out Cecil's form. Even so, they can read his expression. They _know_ this face, know this little smile.

Carlos is pretty sure these are his original eyes. They're close enough, anyway. A little more glowing, maybe, and a bit wiser-with-the-secrets-of-the-universe, but definitely still familiar. 

Cecil’s face lights up with recognition when they hit just about the right height. Carlos is _maybe_ envisioning himself a little taller than he actually was, but Cecil is hardly going to hold it against him. Or even mention it. 

As soon as the mass is close enough, he's got much better things to do, anyway. Like reaching out to it. He's going to feel really silly if there's not enough actual mass there yet to be even semi-solid, but it's a chance he's more than willing to take to get his arms around Carlos, to have something to lean into, because, realism or optimism, Voice or not, Night Vale or not, his knees are a little wobbly with relief and intermittent adrenaline. 

There's definitely enough mass. As Cecil steps in it settles further, an approximation of a head and shoulders begin to coalesce. The hands shift, moving around to a more standard position. Carlos can feel so _much_ now, the weight of arms, the expanse and collapse of lungs. The more he touches, the more he solidifies.

It's not quite like being held by Carlos, but Cecil sinks his weight against him immediately all the same. If he closed his eyes, it wouldn’t be _so_ different, but he deliberately resists the urge. He doesn’t want Carlos to think that he doesn't accept him like this, even as he's radiating happiness (quite literally, to some of the eyes) that he's got something to hold.

Carlos buries all his fingers into Cecil’s hair now, marveling at the texture as it spills between each digit. He gently pulls Cecil's forehead to his, trying to name the color of his eyes but completely failing. They are, he determines, Cecil-colored.

_Hi._


End file.
